CLEVO BIOS Mods

[GoingDeaf]

Naman and Prema,

Sorry if this is the wrong thread, but you seem knowledgeable.

I have the Clevo P170HM and would like to adjust the fan mappings. I belive they exist in the EC bios. Do you know it it's possible?

[Prema]

Naman and Prema,

Sorry if this is the wrong thread, but you seem knowledgeable.

I have the Clevo P170HM and would like to adjust the fan mappings. I belive they exist in the EC bios. Do you know it it's possible?

I have seen fan maps for CPU in the EC/BIOS...i guess for GPU the GPU bios controls them...will check once i find time!

[Naman]

I have run my laptop without a VGA card once.. But its fan was still connected. Computer responded this with a overheat precaution. Because of this i think, vga fan is controlled by EC. Yet, the fan is connected to mainboard.

[GoingDeaf]

Ok, I'm really more interested in controlling the cpu fan.

I decided to use AMIBCP to take a look in EC FW 06 and 09, but to me they look the same. Can I really use AMIBCP for editing the EC FW?

Basically everyhing setting in "Setup Configuration" is marked "Show=Yes", but it's no visible in bios...

Ex: Main -> Advanced -> Thermal Configuration -> Platform Thermal Configuration:

Active Trip Point Lo Fan Speed (Show=yes, Access/Use=Default, Failsafe=55, Optimal=55).

Too me it seems as if the fan starts at 40 C...

[Naman]

Every version of Main BIOS and EC look same in AMIBCP.

I didnt try to change fan control values before. AFAIK, some of the settings seen in AMIBCP are ignored.

BTW, you should not make mods on default image files. In my opinion you should dump your bios first and work on it.

And also just play with Optimized Column. DO NOT change any other values in other areas.

At flashing stage, you should flash both main bios, ec and NVRAM. After flashing you should enter your bios and press f3 to make your changes active and then reboot. If it does not boot, you have your bios bricked

[GoingDeaf]

Every version of Main BIOS and EC look same in AMIBCP.

Ok, but do the values reported by AMIBCP reflect the actual values? The show column for example shows "Yes" for all settings, even though they aren't visible in bios.

I didnt try to change fan control values before. AFAIK, some of the settings seen in AMIBCP are ignored.

Hmm, how do we know if a settings is ignored or not?

BTW, you should not make mods on default image files. In my opinion you should dump your bios first and work on it.

Ok, so that my settings are reflected in the image file? I'm on linux and just running the AMIBCP in a virtual machine. Will try afuwin.exe via Wine and see if it works.

And also just play with Optimized Column. DO NOT change any other values in other areas.

At flashing stage, you should flash both main bios, ec and NVRAM. After flashing you should enter your bios and press f3 to make your changes active and then reboot.

If I only modify the EC bios shouldn't I just have to flash the EC then?

If it does not boot, you have your bios bricked

Hehe, I'd really like to avoid that.

I tried to compare two different versions in a hex-diff program but there are too many differences. There are probably some check sum which must be correct as well so you probably just can't change values at will...

On a side note; I looked att the strings in the bios file and I also saw the string P170HMx.rom pop up a few times. How's your un-bricking going?

Are there any articles/resources or any other information that one should read before trying to mod a bios?

[GoingDeaf]

Ah...got my hopes up (again ) that we got an XTU bios...

If we would just have a way to dump the NVRAM...but even AMI SCE 2.01.0028 doesn`t work on our bios...

EDIT: UPDATED OP WITH AMIBCP 4.53

Reading the nvram from linux shouldn't be too hard.

See: http://www.pixelbeat.org/docs/bios/

On my P170HM it looks like:

Code:

# hexdump -C /dev/nvram
00000000 00 00 40 9e ca d3 2b 76 02 ff ff bb d6 aa d9 d3 |..@...+v........|
00000010 f2 19 58 37 5f 9b e3 7c d2 a3 5e 0a 6e 9d 2e 22 |..X7_..|..^.n.."|
00000020 10 2e ff ff 20 9a b0 ec 0c dc 92 7a b0 7b 06 f3 |.... ......z.{..|
00000030 13 2c 00 00 cc 28 41 78 60 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |.,...(Ax`.......|
00000040 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |................|
00000050 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 7f 21 ce 5f |.............!._|
00000060 33 a0 b8 ea 24 cf f4 3f b9 5f b0 2d 18 fc f7 19 |3...$..?._.-....|
00000070 15 33 |.3|
00000072

[Prema]

Reading the nvram from linux shouldn't be too hard.

See: http://www.pixelbeat.org/docs/bios/

On my P170HM it looks like:

Code:

# hexdump -C /dev/nvram
00000000 00 00 40 9e ca d3 2b 76 02 ff ff bb d6 aa d9 d3 |..@...+v........|
00000010 f2 19 58 37 5f 9b e3 7c d2 a3 5e 0a 6e 9d 2e 22 |..X7_..|..^.n.."|
00000020 10 2e ff ff 20 9a b0 ec 0c dc 92 7a b0 7b 06 f3 |.... ......z.{..|
00000030 13 2c 00 00 cc 28 41 78 60 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |.,...(Ax`.......|
00000040 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |................|
00000050 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 7f 21 ce 5f |.............!._|
00000060 33 a0 b8 ea 24 cf f4 3f b9 5f b0 2d 18 fc f7 19 |3...$..?._.-....|
00000070 15 33 |.3|
00000072

Since XTU runs on your machine. Do you have an XM CPU? If so, could you do us a favour and change the "Max Turbo Boost Ratio" one notch up and dump NVRAM again?

[Prema]

Additional information from a reseller:

FN+B Does something...but we don't know what it does...try just hold down FN+B and then turn it on...When the HDD light flickers a bunch then let go...it also resets the EC and something else...also fixed NVRAM corruption with it...

...Prema, if you are using the default BIOS 1.01.05 & EC1.00.09 can you please share your BIOS dump(from AFUWIN) in here? Thank you

Here the DUMP:

http://www.mediafire.com/?53dch8wialiox25


Naman, you where right! It should be named "P170HMx.rom" and be at CD001 (CD ROM DRIVE 1)

Attached are the recovery modules:

[GoingDeaf]

Reading the nvram from linux shouldn't be too hard.

See: http://www.pixelbeat.org/docs/bios/

On my P170HM it looks like:

Code:

# hexdump -C /dev/nvram
00000000 00 00 40 9e ca d3 2b 76 02 ff ff bb d6 aa d9 d3 |..@...+v........|
00000010 f2 19 58 37 5f 9b e3 7c d2 a3 5e 0a 6e 9d 2e 22 |..X7_..|..^.n.."|
00000020 10 2e ff ff 20 9a b0 ec 0c dc 92 7a b0 7b 06 f3 |.... ......z.{..|
00000030 13 2c 00 00 cc 28 41 78 60 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |.,...(Ax`.......|
00000040 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |................|
00000050 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 7f 21 ce 5f |.............!._|
00000060 33 a0 b8 ea 24 cf f4 3f b9 5f b0 2d 18 fc f7 19 |3...$..?._.-....|
00000070 15 33 |.3|
00000072

Since XTU runs on your machine. Do you have an XM CPU? If so, could you do us a favour and change the "Max Turbo Boost Ratio" one notch up and dump NVRAM again?

Sorry for not replying, real life came in the way for a while.

I don't have an XM cpu unfortunately.